Best way to claim for ebay item delivered damaged by royal mail

barnaclebill

Two large figurines I was selling on ebay sold one for £41.00 and one for £43.00, I posted them royal mail 2nd class sign for value £50.00 and paid for collection from my house. Could not find large enough boxes so bought some on ebay plus more bubble wrap, both items were well packed, even added some air bage I had. One has arrived ok the other arrived not just damaged but one leg is smashed in three pieces, refunded the buyer and started to fill in the royal mail claim for. Can't believe how complicated they made it. They want proof of posting but they collected it from my home, proof of value, it sold for £41.00. Managed to upload photos of the damage sent to me by the buyer and have taken photos of screen shots of their emails and ebay screen shots showing sold value that I will print off and post as they request. Looks like they want to wriggle out of paying so anything else I should send? I have asked the buyer to hang on to the broken item for a little while in case they want to see it.

martindow

barnaclebill said:

Two large figurines I was selling on ebay sold one for £41.00 and one for £43.00, I posted them royal mail 2nd class sign for value £50.00 and paid for collection from my house. Could not find large enough boxes so bought some on ebay plus more bubble wrap, both items were well packed, even added some air bage I had. One has arrived ok the other arrived not just damaged but one leg is smashed in three pieces, refunded the buyer and started to fill in the royal mail claim for. Can't believe how complicated they made it. They want proof of posting but they collected it from my home, proof of value, it sold for £41.00. Managed to upload photos of the damage sent to me by the buyer and have taken photos of screen shots of their emails and ebay screen shots showing sold value that I will print off and post as they request. Looks like they want to wriggle out of paying so anything else I should send? I have asked the buyer to hang on to the broken item for a little while in case they want to see it.

You need to ask them to keep the packaging too.  Is the outer box damaged?  If so I would be surprised if they paid out as that would show that your packaging had not protected the item.

I send a lot of fragile items but have an inner box with the fragile item protected by bubble wrap and then put this inside a larger box with packaging between the two.  The rule of thumb is that you would be happy dropping the box from chest height onto a solid floor.  Parcels get thrown around, go on conveyor belts and have many more parcels piled on top of them.  They need to be very well packed.

Spoonie_Turtle

barnaclebill said:

They want proof of posting but they collected it from my home,

You should have been left a piece of paper with the collection details when your postie collected it.  (Mine have been pink, if that's any help.)

custardy

Spoonie_Turtle said:

barnaclebill said:

They want proof of posting but they collected it from my home,

You should have been left a piece of paper with the collection details when your postie collected it.  (Mine have been pink, if that's any help.)

For a residential collection? AFAIK this is all done via PDA with no paperwork (excluding test areas supplying labels)

Spoonie_Turtle

custardy said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

barnaclebill said:

They want proof of posting but they collected it from my home,

You should have been left a piece of paper with the collection details when your postie collected it.  (Mine have been pink, if that's any help.)

For a residential collection? AFAIK this is all done via PDA with no paperwork (excluding test areas supplying labels)

Oops, now I think about it, only the first couple.  The most recent ones had e-mail and/or text confirmation.

barnaclebill

Good news, Royal mail refunded full sale price plus potage.

ElefantEd

barnaclebill said:

Good news, Royal mail refunded full sale price plus potage.

What type of soup? PS Good result!

fenwick458

barnaclebill said:

 proof of value, it sold for £41.00.

Glad you got it sorted, But I'm sure in the past I've tried using the sale price as the proof of value, but have been told that's not proof of what it's worth and have had to provide receipts or valuations to prove my case. basically more jumping through hoops as they try to wriggle out of it.
now every time I send something valuable I have realised that oversizing the parcel is much cheaper than paying for insurance and probably more likely to work(i.e they probably won't pay out anyway, for example the list of parcels Hermes won't pay out for is insanely long). I just put it in the biggest box you can imagine. last one was a pair of carbon wheels for a road bike, I booked the courier and found out the max parcel size, and put them in a box, then covered in bubblerap & polystyrene and put in another box, then put in bubblewrap and polystyrene and put in another box, and then end box was 1.6m x 800mm x 300mm and weighed 11kg and the wheels were only just over a kilo to start with. that was the exact max size it could be, but I could have made it upto 30kg if I wanted but didn't have any suitable packing to do that unfortunately

Pollycat

fenwick458 said:

barnaclebill said:

 proof of value, it sold for £41.00.

Glad you got it sorted, But I'm sure in the past I've tried using the sale price as the proof of value, but have been told that's not proof of what it's worth and have had to provide receipts or valuations to prove my case. basically more jumping through hoops as they try to wriggle out of it.
now every time I send something valuable I have realised that oversizing the parcel is much cheaper than paying for insurance and probably more likely to work(i.e they probably won't pay out anyway, for example the list of parcels Hermes won't pay out for is insanely long). I just put it in the biggest box you can imagine. last one was a pair of carbon wheels for a road bike, I booked the courier and found out the max parcel size, and put them in a box, then covered in bubblerap & polystyrene and put in another box, then put in bubblewrap and polystyrene and put in another box, and then end box was 1.6m x 800mm x 300mm and weighed 11kg and the wheels were only just over a kilo to start with. that was the exact max size it could be, but I could have made it upto 30kg if I wanted but didn't have any suitable packing to do that unfortunately

Was that with Royal Mail or courier?
Surely if you've sold an item for £x, then that's what it's worth because someone has paid that amount of money for it. (that might be a somewhat naive assumption on my part ).
A bit like saying my 2 bed back-to-back terraced house is worth £1,000,000 when next door sold for £55K.
Something is only worth what somebody else is willing to pay at the time you put it up for sale.

Glad the OP got his problem sorted.

fenwick458

no it was with parcel2go. a service which I'll never use again just book direct with the courier yourself.
I'll try and fid the e-mails to copy the exact wording they used

soolin

fenwick458 said:

no it was with parcel2go. a service which I'll never use again just book direct with the courier yourself.
I'll try and fid the e-mails to copy the exact wording they used

There is a difference between a claim as a business and one as a private seller. Usually a business cannot reclaim their profit, so RM and couriers will only pay out the item cost. For a private seller with second hand goods there is no profit element so they should pay out the sale cost. 

Adding a third party re seller like parcel2go into the mix just adds an extra layer of rules and T and CS.